when normal doesn't feel normal

the sun has set blue over the mountains. the crickets have a blanket of song. the fireflies are out, their bellies glowing yellow in the darkness. the top of the sky is still light but the mountain edge is being swallowed by the horizon now. the house lights are warm but it’s cold inside the way southern houses are here. i miss the warmth of africa.

i miss so many things.

it’s hard to be back here. it’s lonely in a way that's confusing. lonely when being with people who’ve known you forever in places you’ve known forever but you feel partly like a stranger- like you have a sliver of yourself that people don't know you have and don't think to ask about. sometimes it feels like you're standing bare as a tree in winter with your leaves all blown off, full of loss, but to everyone else you look normal.

i think to most people, when you come back from living overseas, they think you've come home. they think you've arrived back to 'normal'. that you've landed in the place you most obviously missed and longed for. that this is the easy part.

it's not.

home became somewhere else. especially for our kids. normal doesn't look like this anymore and guess what? we haven't been longing for this place or missing it horribly. we now miss our home across the world. we now miss our other normal and we long for that. for those relationships. for that work. for those potholed streets. for the night sounds and skies and warm air , the smell of diesel fumes and burning.

and guess what?  we want to talk about it. we want to tell you about our friendships and our life there. about the last trip to the hairy lemon when the snake fell out of the roof and ate the lizard. we want to tell you about how hard it was to say goodbye to edith. we want to tell you about the last day of school and about going to the refugee camps. i want to talk about keni's mom dying and her funeral. and naming the baby and
about our walks on campus, about my clinic and the village and the buildings mike is working on. 

so it's very strange returning to a parallel universe. all these things are part of us but no one here knows them. no one here has done life with us there and there is just something lonely in that. i think i need or want to find a way to share it. even if slowly. even if only to a very few.